Our Personal Job Fair

Friday the boys and I went to Starbucks to treat ourselves after getting up early for dog duty.

We have neighborhood Starbucks right around the corner. Both boys are developing a taste for coffee. Poor guys.. I think dh and I will ruin them as we started them off on the good stuff.

S's favorite is Latte, B's is Coffee Mocha. Kinda like a yummy hot chocolate/coffee mix!

This Starbucks is neat as it is the closest thing we have to a neighborhood Cheers. I often will run into neighbors there. The atmosphere is very friendly, many people just hanging out. I love going in mid-morning when the rest of the world is at school and work.

It was pretty empty on this visit, so we just hung out and I struck up a conversation with the barista. We began talking about his job and if it was hard to learn all the drinks. This was after the boys wanted to know what some different drinks were as they were looking for a change from their regular order.

The conversation went on.. and the manger joined in. We learned:

Starbucks is a great company to work for.
The training is more upfront, but then continues as new drinks are always added.
The atmosphere of work is wonderful.
The management is superb and this trickles down to each employee (something I found as well when I was in the corporate world)
You get benefits even if you are part time (I think 20 hours)


As we left, S saw his orthodontist as well. He is a great guy and very quiet. Also kind of a role model for the boys who have a casual relationship with him and see how he runs his office and how a quiet personality works in the otherwise loud world.



Later on we made a trip to our local Gamestop. Another place we frequent.

The boys call it (and other local Gamestops often) and know the employees. Discussion often centers on how well they give customer service, etc.

The person working that day (Barry) is fairly new, and very nice. I struck up another conversation while the boys listened.

We learned:

Barry is the manger, has been for 3 months. When asked he shared his opinions of what it was like to work at Gamestop.

Not entirely positive. They move employees around at random. He had opened a store and got it running well - felt invested- and they just moved him to this new store. They push them to sell used games and subscriptions.

We talked about forming relationships with customers, not just pushing sales. The management is not very good- Barry does it his way and explained how he tries and form relationships. He knew us.. named the last 3 games we came in and bought, though we had not really stopped to talk to him before. :)

Talking afterwards we compared this to various companies my dh has worked for, and though a completely different market (high tech corporate vs. retail VG) several things rang true. Sales is about relationships and my dh was least happy with companies who didn't recognize that.

After leaving Gamestop, had nice discussion comparing and contrasting working at the two companies. Barry had also shared that he works 40 hours a week but also is going to college at night to get into nursing school. Talked about the option of college alone, or college while working, etc.

Think we got more out of this day than we would have at a job fair. Also about what these kind of jobs would be like working as a profession.. vs as a stepping stone to something else.

Some nice connections.

Oh, Starbucks gives employees a free pound of coffee a week! Boys know my vote should they decide to take on a summer job in the coming years...

Plus at Gamestop they would have to sell games they don't morally agree with. Stepping stone to thinking about future companies and their social responsibility (or lack of).